Doomsday Cult Sets July 2011 As Date Of Armageddon

Cleveland, OH (OPENPRESS) January 6, 2011 -- The Church of the SubGenius has announced that the end of the world will take place on Tuesday, July 5, 2011, at precisely 7:00 AM. In preparation for the fulfillment of this doomsday prophecy, the Church is requesting that all of its members participate in a bizarre religious ceremony taking place in southeastern Ohio, during the final weekend before the arrival of the apocalypse.

Since its inception in 1953, Church founder J.R. "Bob" Dobbs has predicted that a fleet of flying saucers will arrive at the beginning of July to destroy the worldwide Conspiracy against the Church of the SubGenius, while all ordained SubGenius ministers will be rescued by escape vessels piloted by the Alien Sex Goddesses, also known as the Xists.

The Church is inviting all of its members worldwide to gather together for the final hours in Pomeroy, Ohio from Wednesday, June 29 to Tuesday, July 5, at a clothing-optional outdoor campground called Wisteria Community. The first X-Day gathering took place in 1996 in upstate New York, and the event has increased in size and participants each following year. 1998 was designated the first true "X-Day," and each successive year has added one to the total. This will be the first year the SubGenius cult holds its X-Day ritual at Wisteria in Ohio, after "Bob" decreed the new location is closer to the aliens’ chosen "Ground Zero" landing spot. This year's celebration in 2011 is X-Day 14, or X-Day XIV.

The Church has been engaged in a massive recruitment campaign to increase the numbers of its membership before the arrival of the Xists. According to Church records, the organization currently has approximately 100,000 members worldwide. SubGenius recruitment has been especially dedicated among the ranks of people who refuse to conform to the norms of society, including disbelievers, blasphemers, pranksters, rebels, hackers, pornographers, geeks, and outcasts.

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State Department Offers Support ‘to Whoever Winds Up Winning’

Humor from the Borowitz Report:

As pro-democracy protests spread around the world, the US State Department today issued its strongest words to date about the situation, offering "to stand by whichever side winds up winning."

That pro-winning-side message, articulated today by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was intended to send a clear signal that the United States is willing to put all of its power and prestige on the line as soon as matters are settled by others.

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Report: Journalist died due to deputies' mistakes

California's Press-Enterprise reports:

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies didn't target a Los Angeles Times journalist who was shot in the head with a tear gas missile 41 years ago, but made mistakes that led to his death, according to a draft report by a civilian watchdog agency.

Ruben Salazar, a former Times columnist and KMEX-TV news director, became a key figure in the Mexican-American civil rights movement after his death during an anti-Vietnam War rally, with parks, schools and even a U.S. Postal Service stamp named for him.

The 20-page report from the Office of Independent Review was obtained by the Times and detailed in a Sunday story. It was the first outside examination of sheriff's records of the hotly disputed killing.

The independent review was ordered by Sheriff Lee Baca in August after the newspaper pressed him to unseal the Salazar files. The report was scheduled to be released Tuesday.

It found deputies used poor tactics at the rally where Salazar died in 1970, and that the department's stonewalling afterward fueled skepticism. Salazar was in a bar when a deputy fired the missile, hitting and killing him at age 42.

The Times said the report, which provided unreleased details about the case, did not assign blame or wrongdoing. Its goal was to review a historic incident from the perspective of modern-day policing and current department policies and procedures.

The report noted that its conclusions were limited on the key issue in Salazar's death whether he was a victim of a plot by authorities because detectives at the time refused to consider theories that the newsman was killed intentionally. As a result, they failed to ask questions that might have prevented the speculation and conspiracy theories that still overshadow the case.

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India's dodgy 'paid news' phenomenon

From the Guardian's Greenslade Blog:

The Indian government has condemned the phenomenon of "paid news", in which newspapers and broadcasters accept money to run favourable articles about politicians, companies and celebrities.

Broadcasting minister Ambika Soni said the practice was affecting the credibility of news reports and undermining the media's claims to be upholding democracy.

Her intervention follows last summer's report by the Press Council of India that revealed widespread payments for positive coverage, especially in the run-up to elections.

The report described paid news as "a complex phenomenon" that "ranges from accepting gifts on various occasions, foreign and domestic junkets, various monetary and non-monetary benefits, besides direct payment of money."

It also involved "private treaties", involving share transfers between media and non-media companies "in lieu of advertisement space and favourable coverage."

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U.S. Justice v. the world

Glenn Greenwald writes in Salon:

...Padilla -- like so many other War on Terror detainees -- has spent years in American courts trying unsuccessfully to hold accountable the high-level government officials responsible for his abuse and lawless imprisonment (which occurred for years prior to his indictment). Not only has Padilla (and all other detainees) failed to obtain redress for what was done to them, but worse, they have been entirely denied even the right to have their cases heard in court. That's because the U.S. Government has invented -- and federal courts have dutifully accepted -- a whole slew of legal doctrines which have only one purpose: to insulate the country's most powerful political officials from legal accountability even when they commit the most egregious crimes, such as imprisoning incommunicado and torturing an American citizen arrested and detained on U.S. soil.

Yesterday, in South Carolina, an Obama-appointed federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by Padilla against former Bush officials Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz and others. That suit alleges that those officials knowingly violated Padilla's Constitutional rights by ordering his due-process-free detention and torture. In dismissing Padilla's lawsuit, the court's opinion relied on the same now-depressingly-familiar weapons routinely used by our political class to immunize itself from judicial scrutiny: national security would be undermined by allowing Padilla to sue; "government officials could be distracted from their vital duties to attend depositions or respond to other discovery requests"; "a trial on the merits would be an international spectacle with Padilla, a convicted terrorist, summoning America's present and former leaders to a federal courthouse to answer his charges"; the litigation would risk disclosure of vital state secrets; and "discovery procedures could be used by our enemies to obtain valuable intelligence."

In other words, our political officials are Too Important, and engaged in far Too Weighty Matters in Keeping Us Safe, to subject them to the annoyance of the rule of law. It's much more important to allow them to Fight The Terrorists without restraints than to bother them with claims that they broke the law and violated the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. That's the mentality that has resulted in full-scale immunity for both political and now private-sector elites in a whole slew of lawbreaking scandals -- from Obama's refusal to investigate Bush-era crimes or high-level Wall Street criminality to retroactive immunity for lawbreaking telecoms and legal protection for defrauding mortgage banks. With very few exceptions -- yesterday's ruling, for instance, brushed aside a contrary decision from a Bush-43-appointed federal judge in California last year that refused to dismiss Padilla's lawsuit against John Yoo for having authorized his torture (that decision is on appeal) -- Executive Branch officials and the federal judiciary have conspired to ensure that the former are shielded from judicial scrutiny even for the most blatant and horrifying crimes...

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